Tech:NYC Digest: June 21

Tech:NYC Digest: June 21

June 21, 2021 • Estimated Reading Time: 12 minutes

Monday, June 21, 2021In today’s digest, New York begins downscaling vaccination sites and upscaling economic recovery efforts, how a “hub and spoke” model could be the hybrid office plan your company is looking for, and we’re here to help you make final preparations for the primaries tomorrow!

  • Our top tip: check this tool before you head to your voting site tomorrow — it’ll be live tomorrow morning and tell you how long the lines are.

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  • Beginning today, the state will close several mass vaccination sites amidst a statewide vaccination rate beyond 70 percent and much slower demand in those places. (New York Post)

    • The site at York College in Queens plus three upstate sites have closed as part of the downscaling, and the state will shift those resources to more localized efforts, including nine new pop-up vaccination sites that have served as early voting locations. (CBS New York)

  • The federal government is investing billions of dollars toward the development of antiviral pills to treat COVID-19. If all goes well, some of those first pills could be ready by the end of the year. (New York Times)

    • Operation Warp Speed invested far more resources into the development of vaccines over treatments, and this program is meant to fill that gap. The plans are for the program to stick around and support research on entirely new drugs — not just for the coronavirus — combating viruses that could cause future pandemics. 

  • The city is launching a pilot program to address homelessness among young adults, giving out monthly payments of $1,250 to 40 homeless New Yorkers between the ages of 18 and 24 for up to two years. (Bloomberg)

  • The city’s economic recovery from the pandemic is lagging, stemming largely from its heavy reliance on office workers, business travelers, tourists, and the service sectors catering to all of them. All eyes are on September, when many companies aim to bring their workers back to the office and Broadway fully reopens, likely attracting more visitors and capital to New York. (New York Times)

  • One flag for your summer travel plans: American Airlines (which has hubs at both JFK and LaGuardia airports) announced it would be cancelling hundreds of flights through mid-July, in part due to labor shortages. (CNN) The cancellations come as United Airlines CEO has warned a pilot shortage is also a future concern with travel demand ramping back up post-pandemic. (Axios)

Happy Primary Eve: Tomorrow is Primary Day in NYC! Polls are open tomorrow from 6am to 9pm to cast your vote for mayor and a range of other races. If you haven’t made a voting plan yet, let us help. This is a helpful FAQ, as well.

One office trend we expect to see gain favor as we crawl out of the pandemic: the “hub and spoke” office. As more companies lean toward a hybrid setup, many are cutting back their headquarters and establishing smaller offices close to where workers are. (Axios)

What it means: A company would still keep a main office in the business districts where they’re already set up — a “hub” — and add locations to serve as smaller “spokes,” or satellite offices, in parts of the city or region more convenient to where their employees live. The idea is that employees avoid returning to a (potentially lengthy) commute but still get the benefits of in-person interaction with colleagues.

According to Adam Segal, CEO of the proptech startup Cove, the home will be the first spoke:

  • "As a worker, I want to get out of home, but I don't want to go far," he says. "So we should create a network of locations that tap into the future, which is going to be distributed."

Joe Brady, Americas CEO of flexible office platform Instant Group, sees the same trends: (Commercial Observer)

  • More and more corporations are “using flexible office space with shorter terms, giving employees the choice, and then measuring how employees vote with their feet … Now, a company can, with minimal exposure, set up a hub and spoke and see how productive their employees are.”

By the numbers: Regions around New York City highlight the trend. Office demand surged in Westchester County, Connecticut, and Long Island in 2020, even as demand for offices in Manhattan declined sharply, according to May data from Instant Group. 

  • Demand for office space shot up 60 percent in Greenwich, CT; 200 percent in Harrison, NY; 250 percent in New Rochelle, NY; and 50 percent in White Plains, NY. 

In many ways, a hub and spoke model is a realization of workplace trends that were already underway, and just a couple of months into the pandemic, we wrote about the benefits it could bring NYC more broadly:

  • “The benefit of this is twofold: Not only would it make the city durable for a future pandemic, it would also accelerate more inclusive economic development, making good tech jobs more accessible to New Yorkers. Office jobs (specifically tech ones) also offer an impressive multiplier effect, meaning they’d also attract other companies to the neighborhoods while spurring new restaurants, stores and more.” 

In practice: Post-pandemic, employees are expecting more flexibility, and companies are on the hook to offer a more long-term solution that works well for both the company and its staff. (Forbes) If flexibility is built into office culture, then how you use it is, well... flexible. That can translate into bringing departments or the entire team together multiple days a week or, with a majority remote staff, on a monthly or quarterly basis. A hub-and-spoke system could be the way to give dispersed employees in designated markets access to company office experiences when they want it.

Related reading:

  • The New Future of Work Requires Greater Focus on Employee Engagement (Forbes)

  • How Microsoft Designed A Radical Future for Hybrid Meeting (Protocol)

  • Five Steps to Ensure Your Return to Work Strategy Isn’t Excluding People from the Future of Work (Crunchbase News)

Among the 20 largest cities in the country, New York was hit with the highest job loss from the pandemic. The unemployment rate hovers in the double digits, far more than the state average, and the majority of office space in the central business districts has remained slow to fill back up. Has your company onboarded new team members this month? (This is a recurring question, responses help Tech:NYC track trends over time.)

  • *|SURVEY: Yes, new employees started this month|*

  • *|SURVEY: Not yet but there are open roles looking to be filled|*

  • *|SURVEY: No|*

  • JOOR, a New York City-based digital wholesale platform for luxury, fashion and home, raised $46 million in Series D funding. Macquarie Capital Principal Finance led the round and was joined by investors including ITOCHU Corporation, Battery Ventures and Canaan Partners. (WWD)

  • Markerr, a New York-based data and insights platform for commercial real estate, raised $5 million in Series A funding. RET Ventures led, and was joined by Continental Realty Corp. and Twin Shores Capital. (BusinessWire)

  • MetaProp, a New York-based proptech venture capital firm, raised $100 million for its Fund III. MetaProp's third fund includes commitments from institutional investors, and a consortium of industry leaders that own and manage more than 20 billion square feet of real estate, including long-time investors PGIM, Mitsui Fudosan, CBRE, Bridge Investment Group, Cushman & Wakefield, and JLL Spark. (Crain’s NY)

  • Selfbook, a New York City-based maker of management and booking software for hotels, raised $2 million in seed funding. TenOneTen Ventures, Abstract Ventures, and Better Tomorrow Ventures.

  • UtilizeCore, a New York City-based power service management tech provider, raised $5.3 million. boldstart ventures led the round and was joined by investors including S12F and Mantis VC. (AlleyWatch)

  • June 22: Trading Exploded: Can Financial Education Catch Up?, with Inspired Capital Managing Partner Alexa von Tobel, EverFi President Ray Martinez, Commonstock Founder Dave McDonough, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

  • June 22: Virtual: The Future of the Office with New York tech HR leaders, including Vivvi Head of People Lauren Gill, CommonBond VP of People Keryn Koch, and Suzy Chief People Officer Anthony Onesto. Hosted by Tribeca Venture Partners. Register here.

  • June 23: Virtual: How I Raised My Seed, with Fairchain co-founder Charlie Jarvis, Carecard CEO David Hannon, and Grapevine AI CEO Andrew Reiner. Hosted by Brooklyn Bridge Ventures. Register here.

  • June 23: Virtual: Engaging Business Leaders on Cultivating Interest in Computer Science Education, with Cognizant Foundation Executive Director Kristen Titus, Ally.io Head of Strategic Services Michael Davis, and Bitwise Industries VP Kennan Scott. Hosted by the National Academies of Science. Register here.

  • June 29: Virtual: Redesigning the 9 to 5, with Zoom COO Aparna Bawa, Google Workspace GM Javier Soltero, Gusto Chief People Officer Danielle Brown, and others. Hosted by Protocol. Register here.

The Foo Fighters

for a 100 percent vaccinated, 100 percent capacity Madison Square Garden last night — the first since the pandemic began. And for the closing night of the Tribeca Festival, a 100 percent capacity Radio City Music Hall got

from Dave Chappelle. This is where we say “New York is back, baby!”

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